So the Republicans have decided to run against themselves. The bums have tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started yelling, “Throw the bums out!” They’ve been running Washington like a well-oiled machine to the point of inviting lobbyists into the back rooms to write the legislation, and now they are anti-establishment reformers dedicated to delivering us from themselves. And Mayor Giuliani is an advocate for small-town America. Bravo.

They are coming out for Small Efficient Government the very week that the feds are taking over Fannie and Freddie, those old cash cows, and in the course of a weekend 20 or 50 (or pick a number) billion go floating out the Treasury door. Hello? Do you see us out here? We are not fruit flies, we are voters, we can read and write, we didn’t just fall off the coal truck.

[I wish some of us were as smart as fruit flies. Altogether too many believe these serial liars.]

It is a bold move on the Republicans’ part — forget about the past, it’s only history, so write a new narrative and be who you want to be — and if they succeed, I think I might declare myself a 24-year-old virgin named Lance and see what that might lead to…

Mr. McCain has decided to run as a former POW and a maverick, a maverick’s maverick, rather than Mr. Bush’s best friend, and that’s understandable, but how can he not address the $3 trillion that got burned up in Iraq so far? [by Bush, with whom he’s voted 90% of the time – a war he avidly supported and supports.] …

When you check the actuarial tables on a 72-year-old guy who’s had three bouts with cancer, you guess you may be looking at the first woman president, a hustling Evangelical with ethics issues and a chip on her shoulder who, not counting Canada, has set foot outside the country once — a trip to Germany, Iraq [actually just 50 feet across the border from Kuwait] and Kuwait in 2007 to visit Alaskans in the armed service. And who listed a refueling stop in Ireland as a fourth country visited. [Talk about padding your resume!] She’s like the Current Occupant but with big hair. If you want inexperience, there were better choices.

For what it’s worth, in the nation’s capitol two statues stand outside the National Archives (where our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights are on display). One is called “Study the Past” and this one is: “What is Past is Prologue.”